


Learning To Speak

by Pigeonsplotinsecrecy



Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: (past) - Freeform, Communication, Depression, Family Dynamics, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Therapy, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29848122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy/pseuds/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy
Summary: A look into TK's time in therapy.
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand
Comments: 6
Kudos: 67





	Learning To Speak

“Has anything important happened since your last session?” Melody Janson asks, a warm expression on her face. T.K.’s seen her for a couple of sessions already, but he’s still getting used to her therapy style. He’s been to a lot of therapists in his time, some of them good and some of them bad. He isn’t quite sure where Melody falls yet, but he likes her as a person, which is enough that he’s going to take the sessions semi-seriously, even if his willingness to share about himself is still limited. There are still some things that he can’t say and he’s not sure he will ever be able to say. He’s made peace with the antsiness of the things that go unsaid. The thwarted words bounce on his tongue like it’s a diving board and they are waiting to plunge into the icy waters of hard conversations.

“Depends what you consider important.” He pinches his lips together. He continues when she doesn’t say anything. “I don’t know. It’s been the same mostly. For all the action I experience, my life is boring most of the time.” Boredom is one of the things that makes him want to use, so he craves the moments of action, but there are never enough of them. He could tell her about calls he’d had on the job— like the baby in the tree—but he hadn’t done a whole lot in that rescue. The brunt of the work had been all his dad, ever the hero, and T.K. doesn’t feel like bringing up his dad because Melody always hones in on that topic. As nice as she is, she’s a vulture when it comes to certain discussions, which is probably what he needs, but he doesn’t want to need it. Some days he loves therapy, and other days, he hates it.

“Have you still been feeling restless?”

“Since birth,” he jokes. “I don’t know how to keep myself busy. Time is slower when I am sober. I only used oxy that once, but it feels like it’s sent me a million steps back.” One slip up, and he feels like he’s ruined everything. It feels like things will never be back to normal, and how can they be? He’s moved across the country to a hot and stuffy place that lacks the cool veneer of New York City. He misses Manhattan nights already. He doesn’t need stars. The New York skyline has always been more dazzling, and since he was a kid, it told T.K. stories that the constellations could never tell. New York may not be a natural wonder, but it’s a wonder nevertheless.

“Progress can be slow and isn’t always linear,” Melody reminds him. “How have the urges to use substances been?”

T.K. shifts in his seat. The urges are there, and that’s enough to send a wave of self-hate through T.K. It bothers him that he’ll never rid himself of those urges. He can lessen them, but he can’t stop them from existing. “Okay, I guess. They’ve been more manageable lately. I’m still fucked up, but I always will be.” Melody raises her eyebrows at “fucked-up,” and he knows it’s not because she’s concerned about his foul-mouth. He can tell she’s noting that to talk about later.

“What techniques have you been using to keep them manageable?” He has a whole toolbox of techniques that he’s collected from various stints in therapy, but some of them have become rusty, and it’s taking time to make them usable after neglecting them.

“I’ve been able to notice when I feel on edge more.” It’s like looking at the radar to predict a storm. He was never able to do that before. He’d always ignored that feeling of creeping closer to a cliff until he was staring down at the abyss below and gravity pulled him over.

“Sounds like you’re learning a lot about yourself. When I saw you in our last session, you were very on edge. You said you were feeling antsy about being in Austin. How are you feeling this week about being here?”

“It’s never going to be home, but I’m getting used to this place. I’m not getting lost as much, and it has a weird charm.”

Melody understands what he means immediately. “Yeah, it sure does. Have you been keeping up with thought-behavior logging?” The thought-behavior log is a worksheet that she gives him each week to explore how certain situations can lead to beliefs that produce unhealthy behaviors and negative feelings.

T.K. nods. “I’ve been filling it out, but I don’t know that it’s doing anything.”

“You did say that you were more aware of when you felt anxious. That’s progress. Did you make any helpful observations when you were logging your information? Even something small can be important.”

“That distractions are good for me.” Getting his mind off what was wrong with him is the best way to pretend that he was okay. He isn’t sure if that was an unhealthy way of coping or not. Knowing himself, it probably leaned towards unhealthy.

“What kind of distractions do you mean?”

“Anything I can find.” Anything but that one thing that he shouldn’t do, shouldn’t even think about.

“What’s the first one that comes to mind?” She’s persistent enough that she can get past the resistance that T.K. can’t help but have when some tries to get to know him.

“I met a guy— Carlos— and he’s been keeping me busy enough that I can keep my impulses in check.” He adds, “It doesn’t hurt that he’s hot. Between seeing Carlos and my job, I don’t have too much time to think. I can’t be tempted if I don’t have tempting thoughts. It’s a win-win.” T.K. is enjoying the no-strings relationship he has with Carlos. He’s glad they haven’t decided to complicate things by defining a relationship. He’s not ready for a real relationship. He gets attached too fast and that only leads to heartbreak.

“So these distractions are the main tool you use to stay sober?”

“I guess. It’s been working so far. I haven’t relapsed.” He’s thought about substances— a lot— but he hasn’t acted on those thoughts. He doesn’t let himself be proud of that fact because _staying sober never should have been a challenge to begin with._

“I think that would be a good topic to add to our session today. But before we dig too deep into that, I want to know what else you’d like to cover today. Is there anything you think we need to talk about beyond this new relationship and the other distractions you may have going on?”

“It’s not a relationship,” T.K. tells her. “It’s… complicated.” T.K. chuckles to himself. “I’m sure you’ll want to unpack that.” So much to unpack, so little time.

“You’re as much responsible for our agenda as I am.” He doesn’t want that responsibility. He wants someone to shove him through this process as quickly as possible so that he doesn’t have to think about it anymore, but Melody has explained how important it is that he takes an active role in the process, so he’s trying to meet her halfway.

“I guess we can add it. It can’t hurt.”

“Okay, T.K.,” she says, “I think we should also touch on how you’ve been feeling about your sobriety.”

“We can talk about it, but I’m feeling fine.” He’s not happy, but it’s not like he’s ready to swallow a handful of pills— _again_. He wants to be sober. He wants to be alive. _I’m good._

“You seem apathetic about most of these topics,” Melody observes. “Why do you think that is?”

“It’s just been that kind of week.” Work’s been hard. He isn’t sure what to think of his new coworkers yet. He likes them, but he doesn’t know them yet. It doesn’t take long for firefighters to bond with how much time they spend together, but T.K. is overwhelmed with having to basically reset his whole life and try to make sense of his new situation.

“What kind of week is that?” Therapy is a lot of questions, so many questions.

“The kind where I don’t want to think.” He wants to clear his mind and forget he exists because that’s easier than having to sort through the influx of feelings that he has. It’s the perfect kind of mood for substances to creep in and screw everything up.

“I see. Is something weighing on your mind?”

T.K. shrugs both shoulders. “Just the usual stuff. Work, getting used to this crazy place. I haven’t slept well.”

“Have you been having trouble adjusting?”

“It’s hard not knowing anyone. I’m good with people, so I can fit in, but it’s still hard. ” He puts on a big smile and acts like his normal goofy self and that seems to endear other people enough, but it doesn’t bring them too close. He’s not sure if he’s ready to get too close.

“That’s something we can explore some more because you’ve expressed in past sessions feeling like you don’t have a good support system here in Austin.”

“Another item on the agenda?”

She nods, a pleasant look on her face. “Does what we have sound like enough?”

“We’ve got a lot on the agenda,” T.K. says with a sigh. “So, yeah, sounds like enough.”

“You always rise to the challenge. Remember that we can always be flexible to suit your needs, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Let me ask, what is the most important of these items for you, T.K.?”

“Let’s start with the distraction thing,” T.K. tells her because he’s not sure where he wants to begin and the first thing on the list seems easy enough. Might as well just knock them out in order. “Or the guy thing. They’re pretty much the same topic.” His heart gets fluttery when he thinks of Carlos, and he’s not sure if it’s in a bad way or a good one.

“Okay, the male distraction. Do you want to tell me about him?”

“His name is Carlos. I met him on a call.”

“What do you like about him?” _He’s nice to me. He has the best smile. He was the first person who made me forget that I was an outsider in Austin._

“I think the sex might be better than drugs.” He says the sex part before thinking about it, and then he feels weird because he’s talking about his sex life with a woman he barely knows. He’s always been pretty open about that kind of thing, a trait he inherited from his parents, but it’s different in a clinical setting. The faded, geometrically-patterned chair feels stiff under him like it’s judging him.

Melody’s face doesn’t change from neutral. “What about sex is satisfying to you?” _Everything._ T.K. doesn’t _really_ believe that sex is better than drugs, but it is close and it helps him to pretend that it _is_ better than drugs. Sex is a release. It allows him to escape his head for a while and give in to his carnal urges. “Like I said, it’s a distraction.”

“What does it distract you from?” _Everything._

“If I think about _it_ too hard, that defeats the purpose of distraction, doesn’t it?” He doesn’t like to use the words addict or drugs or substances, which probably doesn’t bode well when drugs are what got him in therapy in the first place, but at the end of the day, the drugs are a symptom of the feelings he has that he can’t deal with. Those stiff words hang in the air and then he keeps thinking about them, and if he thinks about them, he figures that he’ll give in eventually, and he doesn’t want to give in. He doesn’t want to disappoint his dad, lose his job, or hurt anyone else. He doesn’t care much about himself, but the way his addiction impacts other people holds him back when he’s on the edge between resiting and relapsing. Sometimes, it is enough. Other times, it is not.

“What do you think will happen if you talk about it?”

“I’ll lose control?” Control— that sounds deep and pathological, and therapists like that, right? He’d had a therapist who had been obsessed with the control thing, so he ran with the idea, thinking it was something he could hurry Melody through. His real answer is somewhere behind a wall in his mind that he doesn’t want to peak through let alone tear down. He keeps a lot behind that wall, just beyond the point of easy access. It’s a cluttered wasteland, but with the wall, he doesn’t have to look at the mess of life. He can pretend it’s not there, and if he can’t easily access it, he won’t think about it.

“Lose control of what?” she pushes him.

“Just in general,” T.K. tries.

“What is it about control that alarms you so much?” she asks again, and the question is oddly unsettling as flashes of him being high or drunk rush through his mind. He brought this up, and now he’s regretting the can of worms he’s popped open thinking it was just a normal can. He suddenly and ironically feels like he’s lost control of this line of thought. He should have thought this through, but he didn’t. That’s what he’s always done; he didn’t look before he leaped. He’s not afraid of losing control, he realizes with dread. He’s afraid of taking control. _Maybe Dr. Bundting wasn’t such a quack about this control thing after all._ There’s something alluring about spiraling. He disarms himself so that no one can do it for him. He hands his life over to substances so that he doesn’t have to take the reigns and navigate through it himself.

T.K. crosses his arms over his chest. “No one likes to lose control.” _Except for freaks like me_. T.K. feels his chest clench, and his heart is pounding.

“The question seems to bother you. Was there something I said that made you uncomfortable?”

“It’s complicated.” Complicated is the way T.K.’s life works. Nothing is clear-cut, and it makes deciding what the fuck he is doing with his life eight million times harder.

“Can you explain what makes it so complicated?”

“It’s weird,” he tries, but Melody has never been stopped by that excuse before, so he’s not sure why he thinks it will work now.

“Austin is weird,” Melody says with a reassuring smile. “We like weird here.”

T.K. takes a breath. “I used to lose control all the time, and it didn’t bother me. I liked being out of my mind and not caring about anything.”

“And how does it make you feel about yourself when you’re in that state of mind?”

He swallows. “Like I’m defective.” He adds a laugh so it doesn’t sound so pathetic. “But also like I’m alive. It takes away the worries for a while.” He shakes his head. “But, mostly defective.”

“You remember how we talked about core beliefs?”

T.K. rolls his eyes. “I’ve been hearing that word for _years_.”

“Then you probably know where I am going with this. What makes you think you’re defective?”

“I can’t do things that normal people can.”

“What can’t you do?”

“Handle things in a normal way. When anything goes wrong, I spin out.”

“You’ve been managing your cravings. That doesn’t seem like spinning out to me.”

“It’s more of a feeling, and then the feeling is what makes me want to do things that I shouldn’t.”

“Can you define what ‘spinning out’ means to you?” _Wanting to give in and wreck my life just to escape my head for a while._

“I go crazy. My mind starts to race, and before I can think better of it, I’m doing something dumb.” He hates to think about all the stupid things he’s done just because he doesn’t have the mental clarity to resist those impulsive urges.

“What kind of ‘dumb’ actions are you referring to?”

“Relapsing, fighting, fucking up opportunities— those kinds of things.”

“You called those actions dumb, so can you tell me what do those actions have to do with your intelligence?” _Because I am an idiot who can’t control himself._

“Because I should know better than to do them. That’s pretty dumb, right?”

“You seem to use that kind of language a lot about yourself. Do you think addiction or mental illness makes someone dumb?”

“I know it makes me dumb.” _My mistakes could have all been avoided if I only used my head._

“Okay, so your addiction makes you feel dumb, but if you saw my other patients behaving because of their illnesses, would you call them dumb? Or did your dad’s PTSD, for example, make him dumb?”

“He went through a lot, so it makes sense that he would react in the way he did. He wasn’t acting dumb, not really. He was just trying to survive after a shitty situation put his life in danger.”

“And what’s different about you? When you talk about your dad, you blame the circumstances, but when you talk about yourself, you attack your core characteristics.”

“I made choices. That’s what created his problems. My dad was powerless. Something happened to him while _I_ happened to me.”

“I’m all for taking accountability, but don’t you think you’re showing yourself none of the mercy that you offer your dad or other important people in your life?”

“He deserves that.” _I don’t._

“What has he done to deserve that? You’ve talked about how his actions hurt you, so why do you forgive him for those actions that hurt you but not your own actions that hurt you?”

“There’s nothing to forgive. He never meant to hurt you.”

“Did you mean to hurt yourself?” she prods.

“I tried to…” T.K. trailed off. “I nearly died.”

“If you got to choose how you feel, would you choose to hurt?”

“No. Who would?”

“So, that brings me back to the question, why can you forgive others more easily than yourself.”

“It hurts me more not to forgive him.”

“Does it not hurt you more to not forgive yourself?”

“Because maybe he’s not perfect, but I’ve burdened him with my issues, so I owe him forgiveness. It’s not his fault that I’m overly sensitive or whatever. He made mistakes.” _But I am the mistake._ “But he’s a hero, and the hero’s kid always has to make room for the heroics, but I was always too selfish to see that..” T.K. doesn’t mention how he still has a kernel of resentment for Owen, one that he has never been able to forgive away.

“What about you? You save people every day. Aren’t you a hero? If being a hero is why you are merciful with your dad, shouldn’t you extend that to yourself?”

“Yeah, but it’s my job to save people, and I haven’t sacrificed anything to help others. My dad lost his whole crew on 9/11. _That’s_ a sacrifice.” _What about my loss?_ the childish part of him wants to say, but he’s learned that that part of him is the one that drives him further from his dad. When he lets his inner child say his piece, the tension between T.K. and Owen smothers any goodwill they’ve forced into existence through years of close proximity and the common goal of saving other people’s lives.

“It takes sacrifice to be a hero?”

“Yeah, if you don’t lose anything from doing something, it’s not a big deal.”

“You sacrificed many moments with your Dad. You sacrifice time and energy at your job. Wouldn’t that make you a hero too under your definition?”

“It’s not like I had a choice.”

“Why not?”

“Firefighting was the only thing I’ve ever considered.”

“Okay, and why’s that?”

“Because I knew it was what I wanted.” He didn’t need to think. While other kids his age had been debating what they wanted to be, he never had to make that grueling decision. He just knew. _My fate had been decided for me already, and it was nice not to have to think about what kind of future I wanted. It had always been written for me._

“What was it that you wanted?” _A dad._

“To be like my dad.”

“And are you like him?”

“Not in any of the good ways.” T.K.’s sure that he and Owen are both headstrong. They’re both passionate and like grand gestures. T.K. knows that he’s a lot like his Dad but not in the ways that would make him proud.

“In what ways aren’t you like him?”

“Well, for one, I’m constantly making bad decisions. I nearly _died_ before I came here, remember? I was so dumb. What was I trying to accomplish by nearly killing myself?”

“You’re back to using the word ‘dumb.’ Do you know the early meaning of dumb?”

“Probably not,” T.K. admits.

“In Old English, it referred to someone who was mute.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And people conflated the inability to speak with the lack of intelligence. Dumb was a word used to degrade and mock those who couldn’t speak because other people didn’t understand muteness”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“While the behaviors that result because of your mental illness may feel dumb as in stupid, you’re conflating your inability to speak with the lack of intelligence. Mental illness doesn’t rob you of your intelligence; it robs you of your ability to speak and communicate your feelings. Your ‘dumb’ behaviors are attempts at communication, but in these sessions, we figure out how you can break your silence.

“So I’m learning how to talk to people?”

“Not just how to talk to people but also how to talk to yourself. Your self-dialogue fuels your feelings and behaviors, so if we can change that dialogue, we can change your experiences with the world. What I want to accomplish with you goes beyond just talking. What I’m teaching you is how to communicate healthily, which can come in more forms than just verbal language. There are lots of ways to speak, and what you need to do is find the ones that work for you.” Melody’s words linger with T.K. as he carries on the session, and he wonders if happiness is that easy. _Is it nothing more than learning to speak?_

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this started for quite a while, so I thought I'd just finish up this section. There might be more if I feel inspired. Thanks for reading. My tumblr is Lonestarbabe!


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